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Until Renata died eighteen months earlier, Bryce hadn’t known a cantankerous moment in his seventy-two years His teers," referring to the children’s TV-show host with a soft voice and a sweet enerations of children
If he and Rennie could have had children, n geezer to grouch A child would have been a s, loneliness rubbed hiht o’clock the previous evening, co of severe chest pains, he had arrived by ans of heart disease, and other tests indicated that he hadn’t suffered a heart attack Within an hour, the pain entirely relented
Joel Rathburn, his doctor for more than sixteen years, wanted hi day, Tuesday A sedative gave Bryce the best sleep he’d enjoyed in a year
When he awakened, he felt engaged with life for the first tiht he was dying In spite of the stale sheets, Bryce began the day with good cheer
In fact, for the first ti For forty years, he’d earned a decent living as a Western novelist Six of his yarns had been made into movies, all before he was forty years old, none since
Cattle barons tor farmers Good men with hard codes of honor and hard men with dishonorable intentions Train robbers, bank busters, posses in pursuit Vast plains, highsands, the bones of bad hts at dawn, shons at high noon, fast horses and faster guns
God, he loved that stuff He loved it as a kid, and he wrote it all his life with never a day of writer’s block, never athe last fifteen years, fewer and fewer Westerns were published, and publishers offered ever less for theone
Readers didn’t have affection for the past anymore because they didn’t believe in it They’d been told for too long that everything they knew about the past was a lie, that the good men with hard codes were actually the bad men and that the outlaere either victiainst conformity--which were the real lies
People didn’t believe in the past, and they didn’t believe in the present or the future because they were told constantly that they were headed toward one cataclysasbord of dooms They believed only in the far future where adventures took place on distant planets nothing like Earth and involved characters little or nothing like contes, or they wanted parallel worlds izards and warlocks, where all proble of demons
Bryce Walker disliked those kinds of stories partly because he could see nothing real in them, but , color without passion, and a pantheis stories
Oh, yes, he was a curh, he would be a grouch of such legendary proportions that he would be re after he was bones and his books were dust
Although he had awakened in good cheer, the inattentiveness of the hospital staff brought him farther down by the hour If only he could have purchased a paperback novel to pass the tih, but he was told the candy stripers were off for the day and wouldn’t be, when at last Dr Rathburn stopped by to check on him, Bryce rattled off a list of complaints about the hospital He expected Doc Rathburn to poke fun at hirumpiness, because that was the physician’s style But Bryce also anticipated that Doc would have the sheets changed, ice in the carafe, ood paperback delivered in s done
Instead, Doc listened to the complaints hat seemed to be impatience, and he said only that a number of the staff were out sick with an early flu, everyone was overworked, and that he would do what he could to ht To Bryce Walker, the physician sounded indifferent, and his promise of action seemed not only weak but also … insincere
When Doc Rathburn referred again to the further evaluation he had , he said the tests would have to be rescheduled to late afternoon because of the toll flu had taken on the staff When asked what tests were needed, Doc spoke of "standard diagnostic procedures," checked his watch, pleaded a tight schedule, asked for patience, and left the room
He exhibited none of his trademark sense of huave specific details of the procedure, but this tiular bedsidelike it had been before If the physician had not been brusque, he had been at least uncharacteristically abrupt Although itof Joel Rathburn, the ard his patient with barely concealed conte for the ice that he kneould not co for the clean sheets that he suspected he would not receive until he complained another half dozen times, Bryce stared at theopposite the foot of his bed, watching gray-cat clouds creep across the sky, stalking the sun His an to feel that his co
Early October was not flu season Maybe there ed epide any earlier than mid-November And as recently as yesterday, before his chest pains, he hadn’t heard anything about the town being laid low by influenza
In more than sixteen years, Bryce had not previously known Dr Joel Rathburn to speak one word of hooey, but now the eonlystew, he wished he had sohts, which he recognized ed in theery, the patient in the second bed slept most of the time When he ake, he spoke only Spanish and was truculent besides
The roo, and on Bryce’s nightstand lay a remote control, but he was reluctant to disturb his roommate Besides, he disliked television fully as less li whatsoever was real, he , piffle, and fiddle-faddle were all he received in response to his coht wonder if Joel Rathburn had a twin, an identical who never graduated either from medical school or charood brother in a closet and was playing doctor
As slowly the sky plated with clouds, no one arrived with ice water, no one caerous colonies of bacteria began to establish thelected breakfast dishes, and sooner rather than later he needed to pee He took ed prostate, which reduced his bathroom visits from what had seemed to be two hundred a day to a more reasonable nuent